


Transgressions

by Kichi (sentanixiv)



Series: Amoral Confessions [2]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Notes are always gonna be at the top note for each piece/chapter, Other: See Story Notes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:26:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27625381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sentanixiv/pseuds/Kichi
Summary: Companion pieces for A Sinful Mercy and its related fic, all tidily rounded up under a series for easy finding. Check the top notes for each chapter/piece for tags and content warnings. Characters and/or pairings will be referenced in each chapter title.-Sadie struggled to get sense of herself, burrowed under the weight of three blankets and still shivering with cold. She dragged a hand up over her face, felt the heat of a fever what stood stark contrast to the chill she felt, and groaned. “-time’s it?” she mumbled.“Don’t matter.” Arthur’s voice, apologetic and concerned last night, had more surety now. More strength. Vaguely, she remembered that he’d run down the stairs last night, come back with extra blankets, and breathing hardly worse for the effort. She’d felt relief even through the numbing cold. Right now, though, she felt rough, like she’d been dragged behind Zeus them final few miles.“What’re y- talk’n?” she asked, slow and fumbling. Went to open her eyes, winced at piercing pain brought on by sunlight, and shut them again.“Don’t matter what time it is,” Arthur reiterated, clarified it for her. “You took sick, Sadie. Go back to sleeping.”
Relationships: Abigail Roberts Marston/John Marston, Sadie Adler/Arthur Morgan
Series: Amoral Confessions [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2019662
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	1. Sadie/Arthur - When Morning Comes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sadie wakes up and mistakes exactly who she's woken up next to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sadie/Arthur - Sharing a bed, sleep-cuddling, Sadie does a facepalm, references to medicinal drugs and alcohol
> 
> Set during [17 - Stitch in Time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26452990/chapters/66806569), after Sadie wakes first in the morning after getting stitched up by Calloway. Indulgent fluff piece written to make best use (read: embarrassment) of the promises she made to not ravage poor, innocent Arthur during the night.

Whiskey done it equal much as the morphine had; Sadie slept through the night, warm and sound for the first time in weeks. Them nightmares she always had tried hard to make rough the rest, but their cries were dulled and blurred to an indistinct tenor. The constant aggravation of her left side, sore from shot and stitches both, came equally suppressed. That all lead her into a comfortable haze that she let herself fold into, knowing that they was some place secure.

Finally.

Sun’d only just begun its teasing of a dawn sky when she surfaced from her sleep, pale rose hues painted on the windowpanes as light teased her away from the night. Warm and comfortable, she mingled with the urge to stay in this peaceful moment for an age or longer. There were, however, things what needed to be done and with Morpheus’s embrace withdrawing under the sun’s rise, she couldn’t much ignore that. No matter that Jake laid up against her, his body warm and tempting her to stay and avoid the chill of cold wood planks underfoot a few moments longer. Trouble being that if she didn’t get moving soon, he’d wake and coax her to stay abed a while longer, with some sweet notion or other and then they’d start the day behind on chores.

It were about then that sunrise brought a different dawning to her; the cold recollection that Jake’d been dead since May and what she’d come to sleep against were breathing and warm, bordering on hot. Muddled by that, thoughts cottony from the lingering shroud of whiskey, Sadie opened her eyes to make sense of things.

Focus narrowed all too quickly on Arthur Morgan laid out on his back on the same bed, firm asleep and breathing steady; her brow furrowed as she sifted through the haze of the last evening to piece it together. They’d made it safe into Valentine, secured a room at the hotel for rest and a doctor for his battered lungs. Arthur insisted on her gunshot side getting looked at and then things got clouded from alcohol and opiates. She’d come back to the room, patched up and unsteady on her feet, and he’d near as made her take up half the bed, despite her protests, while he lay atop the blankets on the other half.

Some time during the night, conscience unburdened from whiskey and morphine, she’d shifted onto her side and curled her arm around his with her head come to rest against his shoulder, her other arm rested across his stomach in a half embrace. The position were too familiar to how she’d been with Jake, unfettered in holding to him during the cool nights, but here turned it quick to a different story. Sadie pulled her arm free in a slow, careful movement to avoid waking him, knowing a scarlet flush crept over her as she done it. She rolled away onto her back, an irate ache from her stitched kicking up as she threw an arm over her eyes.

That she’d shared the bed were complicated and could be explained as sensible, but sidling up to him? _Sadie Adler!_ Behaving ain’t ever been her strong suit and reluctantly she supposed the blame could fall on the blend of her inebriation, but weren’t there a line to toe when her bedmate were friend and deathly ill both? Mind that he sure had not stopped her, but had he been awake when she done it?

Thank God for the small favour that her desire’d been squandered and lost for months, that it lead to her not making passes and gestures at Arthur like she would’ve with Jake in the early haze of waking. Sadie groaned at herself and rolled to the edge of the bed. Hell, but she had been awful free about things like that with her husband. Weren’t no one around to catch them if she woke Jake with her hand stroking the length of him while she smiled mischievous, or if they took too much time together at the woodshed without handling the burning sort of wood. He’d encouraged her as much as she drew him out of that shell and just-

“Christ, Sadie,” she muttered to herself, managed to pull herself mostly free from the blanket and bed. The long skirt on borrow tugged her back, pinned under Arthur’s thick frame from when he’d rolled onto his back sometime in the night, sometime before she’d pushed up next to him. She let out a huff of air and pulled on it, slow and steady, until the hem came free. Careful not to wake him and, in that, having to explain nothing about what she had or hadn’t done.

The air came cool that morning and so she remedied her near miss by trying to set the blanket over him. Damn fool, stubbornly set on sleeping atop them covers like a gentleman, still had half of it trapped under him and she gave up the whole mission. Settled on pulling what’d been her half of the bedding over his chest to keep the cold from sinking claws into his lungs.

Sadie sat on the edge of the bed a few moments longer, watching the slow, staggered pattern of his breath, thinking to what’d gotten them here and safe, some to what was ahead. Doing her best to not think on what she’d been close to doing in her sleep.

Arthur only halfway dragged out of the devil’s embrace and here she could’ve pushed him to sin anew if she’d had any less of her senses about her. Ain’t he said last night something about protecting his pretty little self from her ravaging? That right there she’d never live down, not in her own head, that maybe he’d indeed needed protection from the dangerous lady he shared the bed with; exhausted and drunken joking that near as not could have turned true and- Hell, she needed to get out of the room a bit and sort herself before he woke up and asked questions.

And if he didn’t ask questions, well she weren’t ever going to freely admit to what boundaries she’d crossed while they was both asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Transgressions! Otherwise known as "where Kichi puts all her extra scenes what don't fit the narrative" for A Sinful Mercy and its sequel. Most of the scenes I'll be posting here technically, in my planning, actually do happen in the context/timeline of ASM et al, but just didn't work in the fic proper. Many of them will be self-indulgent pieces. Some will be smut, negl. I'll be linking the chapter they tie into in the top notes, and going back to the chapter itself and linking the extra scene(s) there.
> 
> Any updates here will be outside of the ASM update schedule, which usually takes priority. I say usually, because I've been distracted this week and didn't realize it's already Wednesday and I only have 20% of the week's two chapters typed. I will, however, make that deadline for Sunday.
> 
> Thanks y'all for coming by!
> 
> \- Kichi @[KichiWhy](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy) (Twitter)


	2. Abigail/John - Keeping Warm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are many ways to warm up, some preferred more than others. Enter Abigail to teach a more nuanced way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Abigail/John - Masturbation (guided), sharing a bed, Abigail's in control LBR
> 
> Set after [22 - Empty Soul](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26452990/chapters/67473404), once John makes it back to Abigail and surmounts the challenge of warming up. Smut, pure and simple; and let's face it, but Abigail would know how to play that man's sex drive like a fiddle.

John hitched the Appaloosa to the lower hanging branch, tucked safe under the boughs of them trees that lined the glade, ground underfoot not nearly as drenched as the rest of the Heartlands. The storm ebbed an hour past and now he only had to deal with being half-drowned, cold, and tired from the job. No more worry about being full-drowned by the constant rainfall of the past few days.

There sat a tent, nestled towards the back of the glade, with canvas walls down and lashed against the weather. The narrow pipe of the small camp stove poked out from a patched up opening in the sloped roof, putting forth equally small puffs of smoke into the cool night air. They had a charred pit dug out in the middle of the open glade, but the fire within had smouldered down to nothing under the earlier rain, dispelling his initial thought to warm up there before heading in for sleep.

John took a breath, relieved to be back at this transitory home where he could try living for his family, _with_ his family, and not running on the wrong side of the law no more. He moved quietly towards the tent, tangled his cold fingers in the ties when he went to loosen them, struggling to fasten them up tight once he’d made it inside. This late, Abigail and Jack’d both be asleep and he didn’t mean to wake either of them. He _meant_ to get out of his wet clothes, warm up, and get to bed.

Quiet breathing and the faint snap of wood in the stove met him when he finally turned inwards, the narrow sliver of a lantern’s glow cast down from the roughed-in ‘room’ he’d made for Jack. Two canvas panels draped off stacked wood crates served to separate his space, give them some privacy while the boy slept. John leaned to the side enough to see Jack sleeping, barely visible between the canvas pulled down over the entry. Smiled, brief, with that fond surge he sometimes had, but only once he’d accepted himself as the boy’s father; like he could be happy, or proud, that his son were living healthy and breathing free. Sentiments he ain’t expected to take comfort in, even a year before.

John stepped quiet onto the planks he’d laid over the ground, a false floor to keep the mud and dirt at bay; took some minutes to pull off his hat and jacket, shivering once or twice in the cool air as he lay them over a crate and a chair to dry off before morning. Toed off his muddied boots and nudged them aside to keep from tripping Abigail later; he’d be in trouble enough for trekking in the dirt, no need to make his suffering worse. Then he shuffled near the small tent stove, huddled over it as he stripped down to flannel; about the only part of him still dry, able to soak up the heat of the fire and hold it against his skin. Kept himself quiet and hunched there while the cold slowly ebbed; tempted all the while to climb onto the cot with Abigail, but also not foolish enough to do so while his feet and hands carried a chill.

Call him an idiot over a hundred things, but John’d picked up on a dozen tricks that kept his life from being a completely self-inflicted misery, thanks.

The thoughts froze along with his movement as he felt the edge of a knife press against his side, a firm hand come down on his shoulder. “Don’t move, cowboy,” came the hissed warning as a warm body pressed up behind him.

John knew her voice and the sharpness of that small knife; wasn’t the first time she’d brandished at him, in joke or severity. “Christ, Abigail!” he muttered, letting out a caught-up breath. “You trying to scare me to death?”

The soft murmur of her laughter and then her hand moved from his shoulder, brushing aside his damp hair from the back of his neck as she placed a kiss there. “Why’re you riding in so late?” she asked archly.

John waited for the knife to be lifted from his side before he turned, settled his hands comfortably on her hips and looked her in the eyes. Beautiful, always, his Abigail, even in the dark of night with the shades of sleep shrouded about her. “Hit some bad weather that slowed us up,” he explained, almost apologetically.

Abigail set the knife down on a crate so that she could place her hand flat on his chest, a wrinkle of concern chasing at her expression. “You both okay?” Suspicious and cautious; Abigail had carved no fewer than three strips off him when he’d mentioned Sadie in Valentine, but not once bringing her by. The two women were close as family, just shy the naming of it, and she’d made it clear in her concern for them all.

Hesitated on how he wanted to respond, the question loaded in ways not right for the hour nor for how tired he felt. “Went well enough,” he passed it off as, rubbing his thumb along the line of her hip. “Got paid, s’what matters.”

Abigail rolled her eyes and smacked her hand light on his chest at this basic response. “You’re a fool sometimes, John.”

“What? We got the job done and got paid.” Jesus but he couldn’t make sense of her; first they needed money, and now it didn’t matter because maybe it didn’t go great? John felt the pressure in his head of trying to second guess her words, her expectations, and sighed. “What more do you want from me?”

“Never mind,” said with exasperation that didn’t feel sharp; Abigail stepped back and pointed her finger to their shared cot, piled with blankets and bedding lined with the impression of where she had been sleeping. “It’s late. Get your behind to bed.”

Took him a long time to get to sharing one with her, only this last year when he actually felt that he fit there in the same space with her for more than a hasty release. Before then, it’d felt wrong, like there were expectations that he couldn’t fit no matter how he tried, so he’d lie with her and then one of them’d leave and not once talk to lingering.

“I’m _trying_ to warm up some first,” he countered, gestured to the stove.

Abigail arched a brow and slipped away from him, walked slowly to the cot and by the way her hips were swaying with each step, he had a hard time looking away from her. “There’re better ways to warm up than huddled over a stove, John Marston,” came the suggestive tease she tossed back at him with a smile, tongue darting quick across her lips.

That kicked up a welcome heat, coiled low in his gut, and he grinned, trailed a few steps after her. “That so?” he murmured with a chuckle. “Why don’t you show me?”

She crooked a finger at him to get him close, then traced that finger along his jaw, the scars hid under a week’s growth of beard. “It ain’t that hard,” she said, voice nearer a purr as the tip of her finger rested under his chin, lured him in for a long, lingering kiss.

John brought his hands up to her shoulders, mouth pushed to hers, tongue tasting her lips as they parted. Her fingers trailed down his neck, over his chest. Could have her every hour of the day and never be sated, her touch like a fire he couldn’t live without.

The kiss broke off as her hand traced down his stomach; then she trailed her hand over his groin, earning a breathless murmur of appreciation as her fingers found and followed the half-hard line of his cock, starved for her attention after more than a week away. “Maybe it _is_ hard,” she said mischievously, palming the length of him. Abigail smiled and turned him, guided him with her hand until he sat down on their cot.

No point resisting, in his experience; John went without complaint, leaning back with his hands rested on the blankets and grinned at her invitingly. Expected her to crawl onto his lap, let him soak her warmth as he refamiliarized himself with her curves, but she gave a quiet laugh and pushed him back further, knelt down on the bed next to him.

“Lie down and I’ll walk you through it,” she teased.

Pushed and compliant to her touch, John ended up laid out on his back along the length of the cot with Abigail stretched out beside him. She propped her head up on her hand, the arm folded at the elbow, and her free hand went and traced a slow line down the front of him, connecting with each button of his union suit along the way. All the chill of the rain and snow seemed to become a memory against the hot ember her touch lit in his gut. He had one arm folded and tucked behind his head as he watched her, licked his lips and smiled, sly and ready. “How about a demonstration?” he suggested, voice a low husk. Keeping quiet from disturbing the boy. “Wouldn’t want to get it wrong.”

Abigail quirked up her eyebrow and rubbed her palm over the flat plane of his stomach. “Now, how are you gonna learn a thing if you don’t do it yourself?” she challenged him. “I ain’t always gonna be around to keep you warm, now am I?”

“Sure, you are.” Maybe they argued plenty, but weren’t no one he’d rather tussle with, really. John had no mind to leave or let her go no more, and he hoped she meant to keep him around too.

“The way you open your mouth to say foolish things, John Marston,” she chided, finger tracing just a bit lower, sliding towards his hip. “It’d be a miracle if you don’t end up needing to keep yourself warm _outside_.”

Fair it were, but he played it up with a grimace. A hurt look hard to make out in the faint glow from the stove’s grate. “You wound me,” he whispered in mock injury.

The roll of her eyes offset her smile, content and smug, as she reached for his free hand and pulled it over to rest on his stomach. Her body was pressed warm all along his side and she moved her gaze from his face to her hands. She leaned in close, lips tracing the shell of his ear as she guided his fingers through unfastening the buttons from his stomach and on down, one-by-one. “First,” she said, voice low, a near purr, “you gotta get your equipment in hand.”

John let the tension coil in him, heat shifted towards his groin as they both worked open the buttons. He closed his eyes, letting out a shaky breath, as their work trailed over his cock, hard and twitched with his interest. “Yeah?” seemed the best he could muster, to coax more from her.

Abigail laughed softly in his ear; her foot brushed along his leg, run up it to hook her ankle over his calf, pulling back to ease his legs apart. “Don’t you worry none about the first cool draft,” she murmured, guiding their hands to push aside the worn, scratchy wool and pull his cock out. She curved his fingers around it, slowly guiding his hand up the length of him, then equally slow back down. “Little bit of touch’ll warm it right up, y’see?”

“Don’t take much,” he grunted, felt how quick he’d got hard. John held his breath a moment, lifted his head to watch her help work him over. Her hands, smooth and softer than his scarred callouses, were right distracting in that contrast and he dropped his head down, back arched into their touch.

“Never does, with you,” she teased. Relentless, this woman; too good at playing him for the fiddle and she took her pleasure just as much from the act of sex as from watching him writhe for her and damn but did he crave it. Abigail left his hand to work himself, hers coming up to ply her fingers against his lips. “Sometimes it helps to slick it a bit,” she urged him with a whisper.

Every damn word felt like a pulse of white-hot lightning through his nerves, focused down and into his cock. Everything tight and tense, John opened his mouth, let her slide two fingers in and worked his tongue over them. The trace of sweat and salt and the first smear of his precome on her hand lifted from her skin as he sucked on them, his hand still fisted around his erection, short jerking motions made in his distraction. He looked at her, saw the lust clouding her eyes and damn was he the luckiest man alive to witness her beauty and her wit, day in and out.

Abigail hummed soft approval, thumb smoothing down the scruff of his beard. “That’s right, John,” she praised, twisting her fingers in his mouth. “See how much better it is when you just listen to me?” She pulled her fingers from his mouth, a trail of saliva falling along his chin. She reached down, rejoined his hand, nudged him aside to apply her slick fingers along him. His fingers twitched, suddenly empty, but she rescued him a moment later, drawing his hand back down to work with hers.

Quietly, they worked his cock in concert and John kept his mouth shut, biting back a groan as she pressed a kiss at the corner of his lips, her hand twisting on the pull. “Christ, woman,” he muttered through gritted teeth, head pushed back to the cot again.

“This ain’t a race,” she chided when he tried to speed them up, hips jerking with need that grew and renewed with each stroke. Felt like his back might lock when he arched it up, chasing the edge that she kept him from. “Linger, John,” she told him, paused to press her mouth to his neck, grazed her teeth over his skin. “Twist your wrist like this,” and he forced a sharp intake of breath, their hands come up the length of his cock, steady pressure as she guided him.

“Shit-“ Panted, knew he had to be flushed, his face grown hot as her thumb lingered at the head of his cock, rubbing it until his hips’d’ve give a sensitive jerk and her faint chuckle at his struggle just made it worse and better and _shit_. “I- Abigail,” choked out. They ain’t been at it long, but damn she could play him hard and fast; loved how she could watch him, loved to watch him as he worked himself or her. That he could be the center of her world, her pleasure and damn- Lost his thoughts as she pulled his hand down with hers, nudged him back up.

Her foot still kept his leg pried to the side and she let him continue on his own, laying her hand on his thigh and kneading a slow, encouraging massage up the inside of it. “Keep at it,” she said softly, hand stopped a moment, moving up along the inside of his leg, paused palm flat on his hip as he jerked up again. Then, ever confident, she nudged her hand in under his cock, beneath the flannel, fingers sliding at the underside of him, down to the base. Cupped his balls firmly, a different sort of massage and John choked on a moan, hips bucked up. All sense and style left his stroke, need pushing him hard and fast, her caress only speeding him further.

Abigail covered his mouth with hers kissing him hard to muffle the growled sound that he couldn’t stop, his release hot and expected. Her tongue kept his distracted as his spend coated the back of his hand, his stomach, and she slid her hand up to help coax every last drop of it out, stroking him as he went flaccid in their shared grip.

Done and breathing heavily, John broke from the kiss and dropped his head back. Sticky and wet, but he felt satisfied and she giggled softly at his expression.

“You always look so perfect right after you’ve spent,” she said, wiping her hand dry on his thigh and then laying it on his chest. “Like you ain’t sure what could beat it.”

John kept at breathing, steading himself before he found some words that weren’t vain usage of god and Christ and she was damn perfect, how’d she manage this each time? “That’s cause I ain’t sure,” he affirmed, messily wiping at his hand and stomach. “How the hell do you do it and why’s it always me that ends up the damn mess?”

Abigail laughed and shifted, moved to roll over to the far side of him, handily avoiding his spend. There, she curled an arm up under her head, flushed and angelic the way she looked at him, made him want for the staying power to do more, but it were late and heaven forbid they way the boy up making a fuss. That’d be real awkward.

“Go get yourself cleaned up and get back in bed,” she told him. “I ain’t giving no more lessons on warming up tonight.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he muttered, cursing at the cool wood planks underfoot as he got up and stumbled to the wash basin, spent some minutes cleaning himself up with cool water and cloth both.

When he was a modicum of decent, John sat down on the edge of the cot, watching her as she fussed at the blankets, then held them back for him to join her. “You sure you ain’t want me to,” he trailed off, eyes roved over the length of her body. “Make sure you got, uh, warm too?”

Abigail smiled and beckoned him to come lie next to her, pressed her lips to his temple as he pulled her close. “Not tonight,” she said. Saw the tired in him, maybe, compounded by the sudden slump after release. The relaxed satisfaction that’d make him fumble at trying to see to her pleasure tonight. “You just owe me twice next time,” she informed him, tucking herself up against his body, warm and inviting him to keep hold of her. “G’night, John.”

“G,night.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ain't written smut in a few years, but couldn't resist exploring their dynamic some in the post-Hollow world. Also served good practice for John's diction and, well. I do adore Abigail.
> 
> \- Kichi @[KichiWhy](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy) (Twitter)


	3. Sadie/Arthur - Impatient Patient

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Returned from Colter, broken and chilled to the bone, Sadie takes ill in a reversal of their roles to this point and it gives Arthur unwanted insight to some of the fears she must've felt while caring for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sadie/Arthur - Sharing a bed, sleep-cuddling, sick/comfort, Protective Arthur
> 
> Set immediately before [23 - Discouraged Folk](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26452990/chapters/67737892), expanding on the reference made to Sadie taking ill and delaying their departure from Valentine.

The heat of the fire made it hard to sleep, but Arthur kept feeding wood into that stove as the night stretched on and the rain outside idled to nothing. After each stretch of his legs to that task, he would come back to the single bed of the room and sit up against the headboard again, while Sadie continued to shiver and curl beneath them three layers of blankets. Most of her rain-soaked clothes slowly dried out on the chair near the stove and he’d noticed the damp mess of her braid started lightening as the heat drew out the water from the plait. It was when she stopped shaking quite so much and seemed to lapse into a proper sleep, that Arthur left off stoking the fire at its inferno levels and instead lay down on the mattress, above the covers, and allowed himself to doze off next to her. Her bedroll, hat, and duster were the only things left damp, so he figured it’d incur less wrath sharing the bed the way they had their first night in Valentine over sleeping in a chair – or not at all, given her reaction to him trying either while they’d been holed up, hoping for his lungs to get better.

The coughing woke him just after dawn, a shaking and achingly loud stretch of it that seemed intent on shedding a lung or two along the way. Arthur felt it beat down against his chest as it roused him and he opened his eyes to gain a measure of it. Laying on his side, arm pillowed beneath him, took a second to discern that the thrumming pattern weren’t the aching beating of his own lungs, but a likeness cast in the way her hand rested against the center of his chest, striking with bare force every time that Sadie, not he, coughed the heavy, wet cough caught up in her throat. Seemed her still to be sleeping, wrapped up in the blankets same as when he guided her to lay there the night before, but there now ran a murky flush against her too pale skin, and a cough run rough that disrupted her rest.

The sight drew an unfamiliar thread of fear in him, furrowed his brow as her coughing started to subside into a wheezing breath, coated thick with mucus. Her expression clouded, lips chapped as breathing seemed came easier through her mouth; too similar to symptoms he’d experienced, early in his sickness, and that realization raised an alarm that, somehow, he’d brought the same fate down on her, but-

Arthur stopped himself. Served up that reminder that she’d ridden in soaked to the core, shaking with cold, after days without sleep and little to eat. This were like to be that catching up to her, nothing more dire, but worrying still the same as her behaviour in the wake of it’d been.

Stretched out along the bed next to her, the blankets still tucked tight around her, he kept still and watched her ease back into a deeper sleep in the wake of the coughing. Careful to not disturb her, he gingerly touched the backs of his fingers to her cheek, skin there hot to the touch.

Damn it, Sadie.

Pushed herself too hard on an easy job gone sour.

Pushed herself too hard for an old fool fallen ill.

Pushed herself too hard for a vengeance that ought be buried deep, blood already let from the throat of every O’Driscoll she ever found.

Pushed herself too damn hard and he were no judge to hold her back from it; had done as bad and worse, riding out for days on end, doing jobs no one wanted, getting himself near as killed, until he run his health down to death’s door.

Hell, they were quite the pair in that regard. Needed a tempering influence what could challenge them without riling them. Someone like Hosea, smoothly talking away the temper, or Charles, unfazed by it and unrelenting in his simple, true assertions. Too used to being directed to each big score, to following Dutch’s plans as he laid them out, and it were chaos striking a balance in the absence of it.

-

Sadie pulled herself slow out of the darkness, the lingering chill had her curling inwards to keep hold of the warmth that’d evaded her all the way down through to Valentine. Woke slowly to the reminder that she’d made it safe. Returned. Far again from Colter and her ranch, removed from all them memories and the hollow void it’d sent her spiralling through.

Not far from ache, though.

She swallowed thick and painful, throat grating like wood on a rasp, and kept from groaning if only because she’d the sense that sound pushed out of her’d make it worse. Her head pulsed with a dull, repetitive hurt, and she kept down a cough with effort.

“You dyin’ over there?” The question came with something of an ironic lilt, like of one found on the opposite end of a dynamic known to them.

Sadie struggled to get sense of herself, burrowed under the weight of three blankets and still shivering with cold. She dragged a hand up over her face, felt the heat of a fever what stood stark contrast to the chill she felt, and groaned. “-time’s it?” she mumbled.

“Don’t matter.” Arthur’s voice, apologetic and concerned last night, had more surety now. More strength. Vaguely, she remembered that he’d run down the stairs last night, come back with extra blankets, and breathing hardly worse for the effort. She’d felt relief even through the numbing cold. Right now, though, she felt rough, like she’d been dragged behind Zeus them final few miles.

“What’re y- talk’n?” she asked, slow and fumbling. Went to open her eyes, winced at piercing pain brought on by sunlight, and shut them again.

“Don’t matter what time it is,” Arthur reiterated, clarified it for her. “You took sick, Sadie. Go back to sleeping.”

“What’re y’sayin’ feel fine,” she muttered, trying not to shiver. Knew somewhere in her head that if she was fevered, her body were already overwarm.

Bed dipped down and she felt a moment of confusion; right, he’d had her sleep there, room hot and his body warm next to her, chasing the cold away through the cover of blankets. The touch of his hand on her forehead felt starkly cool and she grabbed his wrist to keep it there, her fingers instead feeling the heat of his skin. “Sure you ain’t,” came gruff, like they was having a small differing of opinions over some factual disagreement.

“B’fine,” she murmured as held tight to his hand even as her grip on the waking sense slipped. She felt tired and her thoughts hazy, all too easily dragged back down into darkness. “Just bit more sleep’s all...”

-

Sadie slept through most the morning and he’d only gone for the doctor after she woke in much the same state, unchanged and ill. Arthur left her with a folded pile of her clothes set atop the covers, dry and warm compared to their soaked state of the night before, in case she wanted to have something more to wear than the make-do blanket shift.

Doc Calloway sent him off with two bottles for Sadie, one meant to ease the cough and the other the fever’s pain. As much as ordered him to keep her with water and straightforward foods, like as not that she suffered from a bad cold due to the bad stretch of weather, but warned Arthur to mind himself, too, lest it take to his chest and undo all what progress he’d made.

When Arthur came back, seemed that she’d been awake a time by the way she’d pulled herself up to sit against the head of the bed. The glass of water he’d left for her to drink sat with half its contents gone and he noticed that she’d dressed in his absence. Only thing were that she’d pulled on a shirt of his that he’d left over the back of the chair by the stove and not what he’d laid close to her.

“S’warm,” she told him when he looked questioning at this choice, her hands half-swamped in the too long sleeves.

Struck odd by the sight, he was reminded of how oddly attractive she’d looked with dirty gun oil smudged on her nose. This sight, her collarbone just visible in the way his shirt slipped down her shoulder, too large for her, struck him similar. Arthur liked it and some part of him wanted to see it more, but he just licked his lips, ducked his head, and dragged a chair over beside the bed to sit on. “Ain’t what I meant for getting dressed,” he said, aimed to be gruff. Careful to look at her eyes, focus on the problem at hand of her being ill and not the distraction.

“Shush,” she said, leaning her head back against the headboard. Clearly tired from the effort it’d taken to stand, walk, and dress in his absence. “S’warm, I mean it. Easier to put on too. Ain’t... tight or nothing.”

Arthur put the two tinctures down on the nightstand, then picked up the glass and handed it to her. “Drink up,” he said. “Doc’s orders.”

Turned out Sadie made for a worse patient than even he. She refused the water outright, then made a face at the taste of the medicines and demanded to have the glass back to wash down the bitter tang that they left on her tongue.

“You’s a bit of a pain like this,” he informed her as she slipped back down under the blankets, shivering from a cold that weren’t there, shuddering from a cough that was.

“Turnabout’s fair,” she said, slurred and smug even when fevered hot.

“I ain’t never stole your shirt,” he accused, pitcher of water in hand. He poured her another glass and set it down, then went for the empty washing basin to pour out the rest there and set a washcloth to soak. This he carried back, set it down next to the glass on the nightstand.

“Wouldn’t fit,” she shot back. More like the words slipped out, tangled in one another as the tonics took quick hold in her empty stomach. Sadie laughed to herself. “Too small. It’d rip.”

“Don’t figure it would right now,” he joked, jaded though it came to be. Too broad in the shoulder, true, no matter the weight lost to tuberculosis. He fished the cloth out of the water, cool to the touch. Wrung out the excess and folded it; leaned over her and brushed bits of her hair back from her face before he carefully laid the compress on her forehead.

Sadie winced and tried to draw back from it. “S’cold,” she complained, a touch of her usual fire flared up.

“Doc said we gotta keep your head cool,” he said firmly, pushing away her hand when she tried to remove the cloth.

“Damn cold,” she complained, shivering.

-

Three days were spent like that, Arthur cooling her fever while Sadie slept the worst of it off. Gave him a scare that he traced the fears of in his journal, that sickness stole from life all too easily. Wonder, too, that as he’d been as bad and worse, she’d never showed the fear he felt now – said she’d had it, sure, but never collapsed under the burden of it. Sadie’d only pushed him, fought with him back towards living like there weren’t no other options. Surety he ain’t felt watching her fester in the fever, cough up the better part of her lungs, freeze under the heat of blankets.

Spent his days alternating the cloth, refreshing its cool touch. Sat with her when she woke up, ate the same bland spread of foods what were unlikely to turn her stomach. Dosed her per the doctor’s medicines and then stayed with her until she fell asleep, listening to her murmur words and statements what didn’t make full sense, sometimes reaching for his hand when her fever burned too hot and she needed something to give her a lucid grasp on reality.

Evening of the third day come down hardest on her, skin burning as the fever made its final push; didn’t seem that Calloway’s blends could do anything to sate it. Her throat raw and hurting, he boiled water for her and got some honey mixed with it. Charles told him about it, a way to soothe the throat when it ran rough.

Sitting, slumped and shuddering on the bed, Sadie near hugged the tin mug, greedy for its warmth. Wore his shirt still – well, a different one; his others soaked through with her fever’s sweat. He’d given up on her not stealing one the minute he left her be, started leaving her a clean one any time he were about to head out a few minutes or an hour and she’d, without fail, have changed into it by the time he got back. That seemed to comfort her some, a familiar thing as she floated in the tide of ill.

Arthur was setting out to sleep, taken to using her bedroll the past two nights to leave her the comfort of the mattress and its cocoon of blankets that she disappeared into without fail. Stove’d been stoked warm and him stripped down to his union suit, ready to turn in.

“Arthur?” she called, voice rasping hard over the pain of the words.

“What?” He stopped what he’d been doing and looked at her, holding tight to the mug like she might slip away without it.

Sadie stared down into the honeyed water. “C’mere,” she said, gestured to the edge of the mattress.

Arthur’s brow furrowed; first time she’d asked for anything since fallen ill. That alone had him Move over to the bed; he pushed the blankets against her to keep the bits of heat she wanted close before he tested the back of his hand to her cheek, grimaced at the heat. Grabbed the cloth and put it to the cold water, a tired routine they both knew too well now. Then he sat careful on the edge of the bed and wiped away a trickle of sweat at her temple, pressed the cool compress to her forehead to soak the heat. “What’s you want?” asked quiet. She’d been sensitive to noise and light, said it were her head hurting, sometimes drew the blankets up to block it out, and he’d been doing his best to keep it peaceful for her.

“M’fraid, Arthur,” Sadie said, eyes closed. She leaned into his touch, body shifted, resting against him like she couldn’t hold herself up no more. “Can’t think.” Waved her hand and then grabbed at the mug left in her other hand before it tipped out. “Ain’t...” Bracing breath. “Ain’t sure.”

“What ain’t you sure on?” he pressed, careful. Concerned at what she meant by it. He reached to rinse the cloth, cool it again, replace it once more. What was she fearing? His gut, dropped low and heavy, figured her drifting in ways he couldn’t keep hold of her in.

Sadie’s weight pressed against him, ain’t near as heavy as he’d expected, muscles seemed like they weren’t working to keep her strength, her balance with any surety. “This,” she said with a hint of annoyance. Lost the thread of the statement quick though, had to focus to unravel a new one. “Hard, waking up,” came quiet and her fingers started to slip on the mug. He rescued it from her grip, mostly empty anyhow, and set in on the nightstand. “M’fraid.”

Arthur took a breath, braced, and set down the compress, used his hand to lift up her chin. Fingers touched against her neck, catching the faint thread of her pulse. Clouds, less of her, in her eyes. “You ain’t leaving me,” he told her, putting words to that cold weight in his gut. Could feel the tremble in her, the shivering of tissued paper left in the wind. “I ain’t letting you.”

“Ain’t s’mthing ordering ‘round,” she said shakily. Seemed to hear herself making no sense and tried again. “Ain’t.” A breath. “Sure y’get a say.” Weak laugh. “Or me.”

Distracted, he traced her jaw with his thumb, put his focus, intensity on her. “You ain’t let me go,” he reminded her. “I ain’t gonna let you.”

Brief came the smile and Sadie grabbed his wrist, latched on there with what strength she did have. “Still ‘fraid,” murmured, weak. “Stay? Need... make sure I don’t go n’where.” There was an honest, uncertain fear in her voice that carved a line deep in his chest. Ain’t seen her fear nothing in gunfights, facing down Sisika, nothing direct, but here she had no control and must play hell on her senses.

“Okay,” he said. Didn’t think to propriety, society, rules, nothing; just wanted to soothe her some way. Get her back to being angry and brash and to stop stealing his damn shirts when his back was turned.

Sadie nodded, shifted herself with her hands on the mattress. Pushed back and that seemed a monumental effort to give a handspan of space before she had to relent. “M’kay,” said, her voice hardly a sound as she grabbed at his wrist again and tried to pull him closer.

Arthur tried to disrupt her the least he could, easing down to lay on the bed before he drew one of the blankets over his hip. Cold, shuddering, and not full aware in how she pulled herself close against him, Sadie tucked her head under his chin, rest of her curled and coiled about herself. Arthur, concerned more than caring for appearances, hesitated only briefly before he rested his arm around her, braced her to keep her close against him. Maybe his warmth would soothe her, maybe not, but she were struggling hard with this fever and he wanted to keep close eye on her.

Lay like that through the night, Sadie slipped into fitful slumber. Arthur fell asleep at some point, adjusted to the trembling and the coughing to the point that he started awake some time later when it all faded away. His heart jumped in his throat and he shifted, touched her chin to angle her head back, careful, afraid suddenly she would be cold to the touch and stiff.

Turned out her skin had only cooled some, fever broken at some point and it left her breathing more easily, her pulse subsided to a healthier, stronger cant.

Arthur let out his breath, released her chin, and she made a face in her sleep, fingers grabbing at the fabric of his union suit over his chest, pulling herself close against him. Thought to extricate himself, leave her be to rest, but strength’d come back to her hands and he couldn’t pry them free without waking her. He didn’t fight it too long, let himself drift off again instead, relieved that she’d made it through.

-

Come morning, he woke to Sadie sleeping still, but when she opened her eyes a few minutes later, they were clear and the only flush of colour were her embarrassment as she pushed herself away from him in shock, ain’t full remembering that she’d been the one insistent on it. He chuckled, but didn’t try to chase her across the bed. “Morning,” he offered with a yawn, stretched back his arm. “Told you, you ain’t leaving me,” added with a smug look. “I figure you was just trying to steal my body heat.”

Sadie smacked him upside the head with the flat of her hand and shoved him off the bed for that. “Liar!” she snapped quick, though maybe she burrowed down deeper into the blankets as he hit the floor with a thud. Weren’t quite sure, but seemed she might’ve said: “It worked, ain’t it?” into the pillow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This scene didn't fit the narrative of the time, but being a sucker for hurt/comfort and sick/comfort, I couldn't full remove it from the "canon" of ASM.
> 
> Third and final piece currently drafted that didn't fit in the main story, but there's a notebook set on my desk and just itching for some new spin-off content.
> 
> \- Kichi @[KichiWhy](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy) (Twitter)


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